Summer Music Fest isn’t much of a catchy name, but why try to come up with something wacky? For one thing, no one could ever top Red, White and Boom. And for another, a local lineup like this one sells itself. Among the noisy notables are Audio Kombat Arsenal (pictured), the prog-metal outfit that was recently crowned Club Wars champ,…
The most scenesterrific show in recent memory, last Friday’s bill at the Brick drew members of Stretchmarxxx, Trouble Junction and Moaning Lisa, plus veterans of Frogpond and Many Series. Given the incestuous nature of local music, this band list could balloon to a hundred or more if it included all past and present projects, especially considering that Mark Reynolds, who…
The Granada is supposed to be sold out. On its way to joining the “secret club” (Anything But Joey’s own term for the elite clique of successful locals such as the Get Up Kids and the Anniversary), the group has filled equally large venues, and tonight it teams with prominent co-headliners Ultimate Fakebook. Unfortunately, booking the Lawrence venue on…
Once in a while a film comes along that is sound, smart, sweet and significant. Whale Rider is such a film. Fault the project on various counts if you like (I’ll try), but ultimately the tale is beyond reproach, a bane to cynics and a boon to anyone who enjoys spirited, emotionally provocative cinema. At this crowd pleaser’s core lies…
As the Columbia Pictures logo looms large in the frame and its torch becomes the focal point, we find ourselves in what appears to be a tent full of sweaty, medieval warriors forging axes, and we have to wonder: Did they already make another Scorpion King movie and not tell us? No, apparently this is just the way things are…
Wheel deal: Anthony Saper’s figure of 8,000 KCATA bus riders (Letters, June 12) means that with the Bus Rapid Transit proposal of $158,000,000 per year cost, we could buy each rider a car for $10,000 and give them $2,500 for taxes, insurance and gasoline and still have $58 MILLION to spend on picking up people with disabilities and delivering them…
We’re still trying to figure out what made four pathetic guys, busted in the recent metrowide prostitution sting, worthy of getting their names published in The Kansas City Star on Thursday, June 19, when more than ninety other pillars of society apparently didn’t merit such attention. Oh, sure, the Star said, the pastor from St. Joseph, the sheriff’s deputy from…
On weekday nights, Woody Einstein sits with his laptop on the back porch of his home in Gladstone, toggling between a hip-hop Web site and a site devoted to Chiefs cheerleaders. When he hits a computer glitch and gets routed away from the short-skirted, smiling pom-pom squad, Einstein (who asked that his real name not be used for reasons that…
A few months ago, Kelly Willoughby picked up a ringing phone at the Kaw Valley Habitat For Humanity. As executive director, Willoughby was used to fielding calls from homeowners. But this one was unusual: the caller was in tears. The woman — a single mother and nurse’s aide with four sons — bought a home in Olathe six years…
Along with drinking go several Universal Truths. For example, the correlation between major imbibement and the bar makeout session is well-documented. Another well-known corollary is the Walk of Shame. (Recently, as we did said walk, we pondered whether the post-college equivalent was the awkward, bleary-eyed ride to wherever we left our car the night before.) However, we experienced a phenomenon…
Back in the golden years of network television, the Big Three companies — CBS, ABC and NBC — often ran short-lived “summer replacement” series instead of rerunning popular shows. These summer shows were usually oddball musical-variety programs (Dean Martin Presents the Golddiggers) that would supposedly whet the appetite for the longer-running shows in that regular time slot. Similarly, one local…
can still remember when shopping malls were such a novelty that they were considered tourist attractions. My parents used to drag me and my siblings to see them, as if we were going to cultural institutions like museums. It sounds weird, but in the 1960s those new malls were as cutting edge as, say, The Jetsons. Mod malls made those…
SUN 6/22 At 5:30 p.m. the third Sunday of every month, Prospero’s Bookstore (1800 West 39th Street) holds The PIT, where local poets come to read for fellow poets, enthusiasts and baffled window shoppers. Surrounded by onlookers, the writers squint through the afternoon sun streaming in on all sides and try to stick to reading — making the PIT feel…
DAILY Even when business is slow in the world of impulsive ink and sober regrets, Icon Tattoo owner Denny Duvenci would rather starve than give a bad tattoo. “If you’re looking for tattoos by price,” he says to a potential customer, “you’ve probably come to the wrong place.” Duvenci defines his one-man operation by its emphasis on artistic quality…
SUN 6/22 It might seem that interest in mountain biking would be limited on the plains that Kansas Citians call home. But mountain biking has very little to do with mountains; it has everything to do with endurance and tight glutes. In a city of fat asses, the Earth Riders Mountain Bike Club is a refuge for the Spandex-worthy. Get…
FRI 6/20 Before we go any further with this Harry Potter stuff, we’re warning you that if you feed us red, onion-flavored jelly beans, we will hurt you. Saturday, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix hits the shelves, leading to widespread revelry among the summer-vacation set. But the parties are on Friday night — the kids just…
FRI 6/20 In the daytime, business types wander over to the Westport Coffee House from nearby offices; in the evening, the crowd takes an alternative turn. But on weekends, a distinctly young crew often emerges. The venue (at 4010 Pennsylvania) is an ideal place for the kind of show Tripp Kirby wanted to piece together. Kirby, singer and guitarist for…
When the curtain falls on the baby boomers, only a sliver of that generation’s culture will influence subsequent generations. The best defense those unborn souls have against that potentially lethal splinter is writer Joe Queenan. The prolific Queenan, who publishes more than 100 reviews and articles a year and usually adds a book to store shelves annually, also manages…
Thursday, June 19, 2003 Today is the last chance to see Ikuru, a 1952 film about a dying city-government bureaucrat reflecting on his life’s work. The black-and-white drama from Akira Kurosawa shows the director’s mushiness-free use of multiple narrative techniques and reveals the humanist in a filmmaker known for action epics. The show starts at 2 p.m. at Tivoli…
It starts in the usual fashion: Two fighters enter from opposite ends to the sound of theme music and the roar of the crowd. They step into the ring. They touch hands. When the bell rings, they attempt to beat the crap out of each other. But after a few punches, all similarities to conventional fighting take a roundhouse…
The satiny voice of Barbara Cook beckoned the audience into Theatre for Young America’s new home at the Two Top Theatre, in the old Fine Arts on Johnson Drive in Mission. And veterans of TYA’s old space — whether in their forties or in first grade — appeared pleased with the result. “They have real seats,” said one towheaded…
Ted Dykstra and Richard Greenblatt, authors of 2 Pianos, 4 Hands, grew up on opposite sides of Canada but had such similar childhoods that they were destined to meet. Both studied classical piano, and each decided at the age of seventeen that he was not the new Van Cliburn and gave it up. “We simply figured out that we…
Caesars is (yet another) Swedish outfit that sounds like it grew up on a steady diet of Nuggets compilations and 40-weight Pennzoil. Fuzzier than a Sunday morning hangover, the guitars are awash in feedback, the vocals sound as if they were recorded by walkie-talkie, and the bass lines could use a few dozen strokes from a lint brush. Yeah, it’s…
Darryl Worley’s song “Have You Forgotten?” attempts to split the patriotic difference between Toby Keith and Alan Jackson, waving the flag while showing some class, to erratic effect. The country star deserves points for rhyming forgotten with bin Laden (it’s certainly better than, say, income-tax deduction and weapons of mass destruction or Saddam and my mom), and his decision to…
